The Independent Schools of the Year awards 2023 , brought to you by the team at Independent School Parent magazine, are now well-established as the independent school sector’s leading awards programme, securing the winners national and international recognition which goes hand-in-hand with a surge of new enquiries.
The focus of the 2023 awards will be to celebrate the demonstrable benefits of an independent school education and showcase the life-affirming, future–enhancing student experience which pupils in our schools receive.
At a time when the role, purpose and value of the sector is under debate in certain quarters, we believe that the 2023 awards provide a perfect platform for schools to celebrate and promote everything they are achieving in the many and varied areas of school life.
We have long believed that independent schools should receive greater recognition for the enormous and often under-valued contribution they make through such initiatives as partnership working with the maintained sector and we have consequently introduced a new award for Outstanding Educational Partnerships. We are also keen to celebrate the ever-expanding needs-blind bursary programmes which have kick-started so many successful careers and look forward, particularly, to reading about schools’ activities in these areas in the entries for our Social Mobility and Student Careers awards.
Our other new award for 2023 is for the Independent School of the Year for Diversity, Equality, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) which recognises, inter alia, the huge amount of work schools are putting into enhancing and strengthening their safeguarding policies.
There are 23 award categories in all and each has been tailored to capture and highlight stories of the great work being undertaken across our schools communities. The Independent Schools of the Year awards 2023 will celebrate all that students, staff and wider school communities have achieved during the 2022-23 academic year.
Delivering and supporting student excellence lies at the heart of each award and we hope that they will give our schools the opportunity to tell us what they have achieved as a school community. We hope that the task of preparing their entries will give colleagues the chance to look up from the immediate day-to-day pressures and celebrate their awesome contribution.
The stories of our winners – who will be announced in autumn – will be shared and celebrated across the Independent School Parent portfolio and the Chelsea Magazine Company’s wider platforms. Independent education is one of the UK’s greatest traditions. Let’s not be backwards in coming forward and sharing the good news about our schools and trumpeting their achievements from the rooftops so that nobody can be in any doubt about their important role in national life.
David Moncrieff
Chair, Editorial Advisory Board, Independent School Parent